School started last week. Cash is in second grade this year and West is in first grade. I think West is even more excited about being in first grade than he was about starting kindergarten. Before bed tonight, he triple checked everything in his folder and was happy to discover that he had some homework to do. (Luckily, it was just reading a very short book to me.) Cash came downstairs, saw West and said, “I wish I had some homework to do!” Oh, how I hope they keep their love of school and learning forever.
I’m pleased to be able to offer a copy of The Healer of Fox Hollow, which I reviewed yesterday, to one of my readers with a United States address. Just fill out the form below. I will take entries until August 23 at 11:59pm CST. Good luck!
Right from the start, Layla Tompkin’s way forward is full of detours after her mother dies in breech birth, leaving only her and her devoted, sorrowful father, Ed. Then, at the age of five, Layla is rendered mute after a horrible accident. “God is leading Layla to speak in new tongues,” proclaims Pastor Simpson at the local serpent handling church. Soon after, Layla is found to possess the gift of healing and her reputation spreads. Even Doc Fredericks, the area’s skeptical physician, is forced to re-examine scientific tenets when Layla’s healing touch is the only treatment that brings relief to his son Brian, whose legs were blown off by a landmine in Vietnam. Doubt and the miraculous, loss and survival, hurt and forgiveness collide when a secret challenges what everyone holds true, leaving Layla, her family and the community profoundly changed in a story about what it means to be truly healed.
The Healer of Fox Hollow takes place in the Smokey Mountains during the 1950s through the 1970s. It’s a heartwarming story about people being there for each other in the face of tragedy. The story moves at a slow pace, sometimes too slow. I was very anxious to find out what really happened to make Layla mute and my impatience made the story drag in the middle for me. Also, I expected a love triangle to form between Brian, Damian and Layla. That would have added a little drama to the story in the middle I think and spiced things up a bit.
I liked that this book is one of those Southern novels where the people of a small town band together to help each other in times of need. When Layla has her accident, the townspeople are mostly supportive. (Some people are selfish and only care about Layla healing them – those people made really angry for Layla.) I loved how hard Layla’s dad Ed tried to be a good dad. Her aunt Avis was also a wonderful and wise character.
Come back tomorrow – I’ll be giving away a copy of The Healer of Fox Hollow to one lucky reader!
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
Boot Polish is one of the movies that Betsy Woodman mentions in the Etcetera section of Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes. She chose it because it would be have been shown at a movie theater like the one in the book in 1960.
Boot Polish, released in 1954, is the story of orphan siblings Bhola and Belu. They live with their mean aunt Kamla, who forces them to beg on the streets for money and beats them if they don’t come home with enough. A kindly bootlegger who lives in the same slum teaches them that working and earning money is better than begging. Bhola and Belu buy a shoe polish kit and start shining shoes to make money. Unfortunately, when the rainy season hits business dries up and they must decide whether to swallow their pride and go back to begging or starve.
This movie hits the viewer over the head with the overt message of working is better than begging; it comes close to propaganda. It’s a good moral to be hit over the head with though. I think there is a more subtle metaphor at play as well. The film was released when India was still a newly independent nation. The orphans could represent India herself – figuring out how to be self-sufficient and taking pride in it. I’m afraid I haven’t learned a lot of details about India’s history yet so I can’t take the metaphor any further myself but it’s interesting to think about.
Boot Polish had spunky Bollywood musical numbers that I loved. They were all catchy and lively, even when the actual song lyrics were melancholy. Belu was just adorable, she reminded me of Shirley Temple. She and Bhola were great actors, especially for being so young.
My one complaint about this film is the English subtitles. They were more of a summary of what the characters were saying rather that a line by line translation. There were whole paragraphs that were obviously not written up on screen. I feel like I would have been drawn deeper into the story if I would have know exactly what the characters were saying – a lot of nuance and emotion was left out with the way the subtitles were done.
If you are intrigued by all things Indian like I am, than this would be a great film for you to watch.
The Soldier’s Wife examines how three generations of a family struggle with the impact of war on their relationships, long after the tour of duty is over. Dan Riley is a major in the British Army. After a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. The outside world sees these reunions as a taste of heaven after months of hell. But are they? Can a man trained to fight adjust again to family and domestic life? And how will the family cope if he can’t? To what extent can Alexa, Dan’s wife, sacrifice her own needs and fulfillment to support his commitment to a way of life that demands everything, not just of him, but of her and the children as well? What happens when love and a vocation collide head-on?
I listened to this book on audio and three of the CDs in the middle of the book were misnumbered. I ended up listening to a good portion of the book out of order before I realized the error. I thought it was just really disjointed story! Anyway, I listened to a review copy so I’m assuming (hoping) that the CDs are labeled correctly on the final copy.
Charlotte Anne Dore did a good job with the narration. I’m not familiar with the different regional accents in England but I did notice that some of the characters had different accents than others. Being an ignorant American, I will just assume that all the accents were appropriate.
I felt ambivalent about this book. It was entertaining enough to keep listening until the end but I never felt connected to any of the characters, except Isabel, Alexa’s daughter. She’s a secondary character and only in a few scenes though. Her parents send her to boarding school to give her some stability. Apparently, it is common for children of British soldiers to go to boarding school to avoid having to move around and change schools. Isabel is miserable at boarding school and I felt really bad for her.
So many characters were introduced so quickly that I had to listen to the first CD twice before moving on to the second CD to make sure I had everybody straight. I’m not sure if that’s the author’s fault or if I should blame it on mommy brain.
I was really surprised with how invested Dan and Alexa’s parents and friends were in Dan and Alexa’s marriage. They were a bunch of busybodies but not in a humorous way. I was perplexed. Alexa’s supposed best friend Jack confused me too. I wasn’t sure what he added to the story other than being kind of mean to Alexa. I couldn’t figure out why she was friends with him.
Honestly, I didn’t have much sympathy for Dan. I thought he was an ass most of the time and that Alexa was a doormat. Maybe it’s because I’m not a military wife or close friends with one. Perhaps if there would have been some background about his time in Afghanistan, I could have related to him better. Or maybe I’m a cold-hearted snake.
The right person to read this book may be out there, but it was not me.
Ruby Sparks is the story of Calvin Weir-Fields, an author still struggling after ten years to write a follow up to his phenomenally successful debut novel. One night, he has a dream about a beautiful, quirky red-head named Ruby Sparks. When he wakes up, he writes down the dream and his writer’s block is unblocked. He can’t stop writing his story about this girl, until one day he finds her in his kitchen. Somehow he has literally written her into his life.
Paul Dano, who plays Calvin, was great. He reminded me a lot of Andrew McCarthy and his character in St. Elmo’s Fire – a cute, angsty, sensitive writer. Zoe Kazan shows great range as Ruby going through changes as Calvin “tweaks” her. Annette Bening is wonderfully serene as Calvin’s mother and Antonio Banderas is super sexy as her husband Mort, even with gray hair and a beard.
Kazan also wrote the screenplay, which raises interesting questions about whether or not it would actually be a good thing to be able to design and control your mate. Would you want total control or is that creepy? Is just a little bit of control okay? It’s a romantic comedy with intelligence and surprises that should appeal to BOTH women and men.
Ruby Sparks is currently in limited release. You can check to see when it will be released in your market here.
(Thank you to my friend Angie for inviting me to be her date for the screening. She was provided complimentary tickets by a representative of Fox Searchlight.)
The story of the Moses clan that gathers, as it always has, on the first Sunday in June, for an annual reunion at a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. And every year, Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed young preacher, brings his beloved wife, Willadee Moses, and their three children back for the festivities. In the midst of it all, Samuel and Willadee’s outspoken eleven-year old daughter Swan, is a bright light. Her high spirits and fearlessness have alternately seduced and bedeviled three generations of the family. But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core and setting the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change. As we follow the family through their own difficulties, Swan will make it her mission to protect Blade Ballenger, a traumatized eight-year old neighbor, unaware of the peril facing her and those she loves.
I just love a good Southern novel and The Homecoming of Samuel Lake certainly qualifies as one. It’s set in the 1950s, a simpler time. I really liked how the author created the slow, heavy atmosphere of life in the South. The characters are fabulous – they are standard characters that are in a lot of Southern novels but they have enough depth not to be caricatures. I especially like Calla, tough as nails matriarch and her son Toy, who is the strong, silent type. I had a crush on him by the end of the book. Swan is a fun character too. Even though it’s been quite a while since I last read To Kill a Mockingbird but I can see why she is getting compared to Scout in many reviews.
Another thing I love about a good Southern novel is the idioms that people use and also the unique Southern names. This book was full of both. Some of the names: Toy, Swan, Noble, Blade, Willadee, Early. Somehow having characters with these names just added to the charming yet strong Southern vibe in this novel.
My favorite quote from the book is from Swan:*
“…there’s always a faction – that’s a bunch of people that get together and drink coffee at somebody’s house after church, when the message is too strong and they got their toes stepped on – anyway there’s always a faction that’s trying to get rid of the preacher for one reason or another.”
As someone who’s served in leadership positions at church in the past, I think her definition of faction is both hilarious and spot-on.
This novel isn’t all charm though. Bad things happen to good people and animals. (You may be bothered by a couple of scenes if you are especially sensitive to violence against children or animals.) Nothing is gratuitous though and everything that happens is necessary for the characters to grow. The story is captivating from beginning to end.
I highly recommend The Homecoming of Samuel Lake.
*This quote is taken from the advance reader’s edition. The final copy may differ.
I’ve been fascinated with Marilu Henner and her extraordinary memory ever since I saw her discussing it on a talk show several years ago. She can remember exactly what happened to her on any given date going all the way back to her early childhood. Since then, her special ability has been studied and given a name – Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory or HSAM. Only a handful of people have been found who have this ability.
I was expecting that the self-help aspect of this book would focus on how to improve one’s memory going forward. My memory is terrible and getting worse so I was hoping for some tips to fix that. However, this book focuses more on retrieving past memories and building a personal timeline. There were quite a few exercises that involved starting with an initial memory and unlocking more from there. This technique did not work for me because sometimes I didn’t even have the initial memory required – maybe I’m just too far gone. I know there are people who have had success using Marilu’s techniques but I am not one of them.
Marilu’s book is not just a self-help book on memory. She includes quite a bit of biographical information and personal examples, which I appreciated. I liked learning how HSAM has affected her life and her relationships through the years.
I listened to the audio version of this book which is narrated by Marilu herself. She does a fantastic job, of course. I think she’s one of the most cheerful people in show business and that definitely comes across in her narration of this book. Included with this audio book is a 45 page PDF file that has all the exercises and quizzes, which is good because there are a lot of them. It would be a real pain to have to stop the audio book and take notes but with the PDF that’s unnecessary.
Even though this book didn’t improve my memory, I still enjoyed listening to it. I think that her program could benefit others, it just wasn’t right for me.
Cash and Little Miss’s birthdays are only one day apart. Luckily, Cash actually wanted to have a joint party with Little Miss. We had a Dora vs Star Wars party.
I made Cash’s cake using the Wilton Darth Vader pan. Beware of the black icing – everyone who ate this cake had purple teeth and lips!
I made Little Miss’s cake using the 2010 Wilton Dora pan. I don’t know if it’s discontinued or what but it was out of stock everywhere, even on Wilton’s website. Fortunately, I found a pan on eBay for a good price.
Jana Bibi moves with her chatty parrot, Mr. Ganguly and her loyal housekeeper, Mary, to Hamara Nagar, where local merchants are philosophers, the chief of police is a tyrant, and a bagpipe-playing Gurkha keeps the wild monkeys at bay. When word gets out that the town is in danger of being drowned by a government dam, Jana is enlisted to help put it on the map. Hoping to attract tourists with promises of good things to come, she stacks her deck of cards, readies her fine-feathered assistant—and Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is born.
This was a charming book with an eclectic cast of loveable characters. It reminded me of a Fannie Flagg novel, only set in a small (fictional) town in India instead of a small town in the southern United States. The people of Hamara Nagar are each quirky in their own way. They are just plain nice and want to help other residents of the town. When the town is threatened, they band together without question to help save it. There is a bad-guy and some conflict but nothing too distressing. This novel is definitely a feel good book to read when you need a pick-me-up.
In the beginning of the book, there is an author’s note that explains some general things about 1960s India. I appreciated this since I knew almost nothing about what India was like during that time period. There is also a very helpful glossary in the back of the book. Finally, there is an etcetera section which is like the extras on a DVD movie, only for a book. What a great idea! I loved learning even more about the author and India in this section. Betsy includes a list of Indian movies that were popular in the time period – look for me to feature them as Page to Screen selections on this blog in the near future.
Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is the first book of a planned series. I’m really looking forward to reading the next installment.
The song My Shoes Are Japanese is mentioned several times in the book. It’s fun and catchy so I thought I’d feature it here if you’d like to listen to it:
